Bacon's Rebellion

Republic Property Trust has agreed to acquire the Dulles Park Technology Center from Cornerstone Real Estate Advisors for approximately $48.3 million. The five-story, Class A office building fronts the Dulles Toll and is located within one city block of the proposed Route 28 Metrorail Station.

States the company in a press release: “Based on a preliminary analysis of existing and comprehensive plan zoning densities for the Metrorail Station areas, the company believes that, by combining the land areas of Dulles Park and [its adjacent Campus at Dulles Technology Center] properties, it can secure additional office and mixed-use development on the property. The company intends to pursue increased densities for the site.”

The promise of higher densities in proximity to a Metro station is a powerful combo, even if that promise is still uncertain and years in the future.

The Kaine administration has disassociated itself from Patrick Michaels, a University of Virginia environmental sciences professor and state climatologist. “Generally, it is safe to say that Pat Michaels doesn’t represent the governor’s opinion on global warming,” Delacey Skinner, Kaine’s director of communications, told the Charlottesville Daily Progress. “He doesn’t speak for the state. He doesn’t speak for the Governor.”

Michaels is known nationally as one of the more vocal skeptics of global-warming alarmism.

Presumably, Skinner’s statement means that Gov. Kaine embraces many or all of the global warming fears circulated in the environmental community. As I’ve explained in an earlier post, the tag “global warming” covers a series of related propositions, some of which are more controversial than others: that average global temperatures are warming, that the warming is caused by human impact on the environment, that rising temperatures will be disastrous for biological diversity and humankind, and that changes in the economies of industrialized nations is called for to slow the pace of warming.

(Update: I checked with Kaine spokesman Kevin Hall, who explained that Skinner’s comments cannot be construed as an explication of Gov. Kaine’s thinking on global warming. She was simply making it clear that, though designated the state climatologist, Michaels was not a gubernatorial appointee. Accordingly, I have revised some of the comments that follow.)

I would be interested to know Gov. Kaine’s views on global warming and the extent to which they inform his thinking about (a) state energy policy, and (b) transportation and land use. Questions:

Does Gov. Kaine accept the estimate that the vast majority of energy consumption in Virginia — to the tune of 80 percent (see Ed Risse’s estimate in “Soft Consumption Paths,” August 7, 2006) — is directly tied to the state’s energy-intensive transportation system and patterns of land use?

Does Gov. Kaine accept the proposition that to curtail the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming, Virginia should embrace more energy-efficient transportation systems and land use patterns?

Will Gov. Kaine inject global-warming perspectives into the statewide energy study his administration is responsible for producing next year?

(For the record, while I think that the fears of global warming have been hyped shamelessly in some quarters, I would encourage the state to adopt energy-efficient transportation and land use strategies as a way to reduce Virginians’ dependence upon foreign oil, create more economic activity locally and reduce air and water pollution. If we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the same time, that’s a bonus.)

If there was any doubt regarding the propensity of people who live near Metro stations to actually ride the Metro, let those doubts be dispelled. Heed Examiner.com (with my emphasis added):

Nearly 1 in 3 residents who live or work within a half-mile of a Metro station use the rail system daily, according to a new study that is likely to provide more fuel to efforts to develop around the region’s 86 stations.

The study, released by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, also showed that more than half of residents who live and or work within one-quarter mile also choose public transportation over their cars.

Metro officials surveyed 1,950 people who lived, worked or visited other businesses within a half-mile of 13 rail stations. In 1989, just 18 percent of those who worked near a station reported using the subway to get to work. And while the numbers are less dramatic for those who live near a station, which jumped from 45 percent in 1989 to 54 percent this year, the volume of customers has increased significantly. Ridership has jumped 43 percent since 1990, officials said, with the addition of just two new stations.

One of the recurring debates on this blog addresses the extent to which growth should “pay its own way” — or, to be more specific, the extent to which developers should cover the capital costs of public investments such as road improvements, schools, fire, police, libraries and other public facilities — a number that could reach $90,000 to $100,000 per dwelling unit in Northern Virginia.

There’s a raging case study in the South Dulles area of Loudoun County, where Greenvest is proposing some $800 million in proffers and $200 million in Community Development Authority funding over the 20-year life of the project. Just think of that: One billion dollars in private-sector contributions, over and above the taxes that developers, business tenants and homeowners normally pay in taxes to fund the cost of local government.

In my latest column, “Growth that Pays for Itself,” I delve into the pros and cons of the Greenvest proposals. What I find ironic is that Greenvest has taken on so much public cost that it increases the risk that its projects will fail financially — at least its critics see it that way. It’s kind of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t thing. If the proffers are too small, you’re not paying your fair share. If they’re too big, you run the risk of failure. That makes it pretty tough to get anything built.

To my mind, the best argument against the project is one the critics I talked to didn’t raise: Greenvest has not designed its South Dulles projects from the ground up with transportation-efficiency in mind. To Greenvest’s credit, the projects are mixed use, with pedestrian-friendly elements, and Greenvest is willing to proffer some 15 transit buses. Also to Greenvest’s credit, development in the South Dulles area would provide elements of what Ed Risse calls a balanced community, with a mix of residential, commercial and amenities — even a satellite campus of George Mason University (land donated by Greenvest) and an Inova hospital facility on a neighboring property.

But the prospect of gridlock in that corner of Northern Virginia is so great that any development in any location must make transportation mitigation a top priority. That includes not only contributing to road improvements, as Greenvest proposes, but an aggressive traffic demand management program — encompassing, walking, biking, vans, buses, carpools and telework — to reduce the number and length of car trips.

I will continue to track the Greenvest proposal as it plays out this fall.

(Rendering shows the proposed Arcola project town center and GMU satellite campus.)

In his latest “Blogology” profile, Conaway Haskins profiles Chad Dotson, one of the grandfathers of Virginia blogging. If you read Bacon’s Rebellion, you’ve no doubt read Commonwealth Conservative, consulting his family-oriented movie reviews, chuckling at his photo caption contests and admiring his ability to parse politics with an incredible economy with words. Find out more about the man behind the blog. Read Conaway’s interview here.

Another edition of Bacon’s Rebellion. You can read the August 7, 2006, edition here.

The peasants persist in thinking for themselves, as can be seen in the following:

Growth that Pays for Itself
Greenvest’s proposed $1.3 billion development in Loudoun County would contribute $1 billion toward roads, schools and public facilities. A great deal for the public? Not everyone thinks so.
by James A. Bacon

Beach Week
Reading might be a lot safer than swimming outside of Virginia this year.
by Doug Koelemay

Soft Consumption Paths
Energy consumption in the United States is growing at an unsustainable rate — and we’re running out of time before a crash landing. We need to think seriously and comprehensively about conservation.
by EM Risse

The Croesus Trap
More money won’t fix a broken transportation system. But the combination of privatization and tolls can build a lot of roads in Virginia.
by Geoffrey Segal

Metro Monomania
Tom Davis is taking big political risks to funnel $3 billion into the Washington Metro. Why?
by Phillip Rodokanakis

Putting Taxes to Work
Let’s use the state budget surplus to set up Commonwealth Trust accounts, funds every citizen can use to offset a portion of their health care expenses.
by James Atticus Bowden

Save the Planet — Stay Home!
In an Internet-friendly state like Virginia, there is no excuse for so many people clogging the roads when they could be telecommuting.
by Joanna Hanks and Fred Williamson

Ozzie and Harriet Were Idiots!
And so were our teachers 50 years ago. The issue isn’t school funding formulae: The entire big government school culture must go! We must return to family-based schooling.
by Mike Smith

Nice & Curious Questions
Emu in Virginia: Exotic Beasts in the Old Dominion
by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

Blogology
Commonwealth Conservative: Chad Dotson
by Conaway Haskins

Tuition and fees for undergraduates at Virginia’s four-year colleges increased an average of 9.3 percent, reports the Associated Press. Room and board charges, about half the cost of a college education, increased “only” 6.0 percent.

The Consumer Price Index from June 2005 to June 2006 increased 4.5 percent. The cost of food and beverages was up 2.2 percent and housing 4.2 percent over the same period.

We’ve heard all the excuses about tuition increases — education is a labor-intensive business, and colleges have to compete for academic talent. But how about room and board? How can room and board at Virginia colleges be increasing at twice the rate of inflation in food and housing?

Jim Webb is taking some heat for moving away from his slogan “Born Fighting.” Well, he won’t get any heat from this quarter. I think it’s about time.

For one thing, I don’t think the slogan helps him politically with the sector of the voter population he needs most to attract — the majority who are women.

More importantly, as I said yesterday in a blog post on the subject of the language of politics, it’s time to move away from words of war to words of discourse.

Now some will decry this suggestion as a move to “feminize” politics. And, you know what? If changing fighting to conversing, division to discourse, and confrontation to conversation is a “feminine” objective, I’m proud to be feminine!

Language is powerful. Ask Karl Rove and his cohort Frank Luntz.

Who can doubt that some of the heated rhetoric being used in public and private debates on the Marshall/Newman amendment or the immigration issue has an impact on the behavior of those, particularly children, who hear the language of fear and division? Who can doubt that language that consistently makes people “other” or “less than” invites people, especially children, to see the groups attacked as powerless and vulnerable?

As the words of the song in South Pacific go, “you have to be carefully taught” to hate.

We have seen what can happen when folks feel empowered by words to action. Just ask the two men who live in Aldie in Loudoun County whose property was vandalized and tagged with the word “fag”.

We can engage in civil debate. I heard one yesterday on a Sunday morning news show between between surrogates for Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont.

And we can refuse to participate in “hate” and the language of hate. Read this quote from Buck O’Neil, a self-described “proud … Negro League ballplayer,” on the occasion of the induction this week of 17 Negro leaguers and Negro leagues executives into the National Baseball Hall of Fame:

And I tell you what: They always said to me, “Buck, I know you hate people for what they did to you or what they did to your folks.” I said, “No, man, I never learned to hate.”

I hate cancer. Cancer killed my mother. My wife died 10 years ago of cancer. I hate AIDS. A good friend of mine died of AIDS three months ago. I hate AIDS. But I can’t hate a human being, because my God never made anything so ugly. Now, you can be ugly if you want to, but God didn’t make you that way.

Most importantly, we can stand up and speak out against violence and words of violence, and against hate and words of hate whenever they appear.

I challenge those who would write discrimination into our constitution to stand publicly with the men of Aldie against the hate that visited them at their home.

I challenge those who would make Virginia the “least hospitable place in the universe for illegal immigrants” to ensure that the temper of their tone doesn’t lead to the same place in which the Aldie men found themselves: homes damaged and neighborhoods torn by division and fear of “other.”

Now in the interest of full disclosure, let me repeat what’s in my profile: I am the paid campaign manager for The Commonwealth Coalition which opposes the Marshall/Newman amendment and I am paid by the Virginia coalition of Latino Organizations to lobby for reasoned consideration of laws that affect the immigrant community.

But my passion here is personal. My husband is Puerto Rican and my namesake (the third generation Claire Guthrie) is half Chinese. I want them both to be able to go to school or work without fear of discrimination; to live where they want to live without fear of being “alienized” as other; to live peacefully in the “God’s mix” that is America. I want these same things for my friends who are members of the GLBT community.

So, I see changing “Born Fighting” to another less confrontational, and, hopefully, inspiring slogan as a small step in the direction of changing the language of politics to a less divisive and polarizing model.

Virginia has plenty of company — not just in the United States but in the U.K. — when it comes to grappling with traffic congestion. Many of the remedies sound the same, as does the public response. According to the BBC, Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander is seeking authority to create toll roads across the UK. Drivers would be charged on a pay-as-you-go basis with black boxes in their cars tracking how far they drive on toll roads.

One wrinkle not seen in the U.S. is the idea of setting national standards to prevent confusion from a variety of local pricing schemes. But the concerns of the public sound remarkably familiar. Says Foad Nouri of London: “This is another tax on drivers without noticeable improvement in quality or affordability of public transport, especially rail travel which must help easing the congestion on roads.”

Ian Wernham, of Marlow: “This is just another way of taxing the motorist.. … Telling people not use their car is like saying don’t use electric light we’ve got to back to using candles!”

And Ian Beedell of Crawley: “There should be concern [about] the power of the government to monitor free and legal individual movement with the proposed ‘black boxes’ that will almost certainly infringe civil liberties.”

For a while, there seemed no limit to the proffers that some developers were willing to make in order to gain rezonings and increased densities from for their projects. Now, it seems, the slow-down in the Northern Virginia real estate sector is changing the calculus of development. Reports Sandhya Somashekhar with the Washington Post:

Centex Homes of Dallas, one of the nation’s largest developers, said it can no longer afford to offer Warrenton $22 million — almost half the town’s annual budget — to approve 300 luxury homes for seniors within its borders in Fauquier County. The developer notified Warrenton officials in a letter received Thursday.

“It was possible to consider such [an offer] as remotely feasible only in a rising market, where Centex could hope to make a reasonable return on its very substantial investment,” wrote Robert K. Davis, the company’s division president. “[We] would not have made that agreement had it been possible to predict the timing of the current residential downturn.”

The deal would have been the most generous cash donation of its kind in state history, industry officials said. Warrenton would have collected nearly $74,000 a home, more than double what Fauquier usually receives from a developer.

Following revelations last week that Patrick Michaels has taken $100,000 from power companies to debunk prevailing opinions regarding global warming, climatology has suddenly become a hot topic in Virginia. Now the editorial pundits are taking after the University of Virginia professor, who doubles as Virginia’s state climatologist.

“Students at Thomas Jefferson’s school in Charlottesville set high standards of honorable behavior. Too bad their code does not apply to faculty. Perhaps then Patrick Michaels, a professor of environmental sciences, would not have shamefully sold his academic credibility, embarrassing all Virginians in the process,” the Roanoke Times high-mindedly declared Monday, in effect calling Michaels either a liar or cheater. “Michaels’ shameful actions disqualify him from speaking for Virginia. Let him spread his industry-funded message without the title of state climatologist.”

The Free Lance-Star piled on yesterday: “There are still climate-change deniers or near-deniers around, as Virginians were reminded upon learning last week that Pat Michaels, a U.Va. professor who functions as the state climatologist and libertarian-think-tank beau ideal, was taking money from utilities to pick apart global-warming studies.” Added the editorial writer: “The rightist line on the issue–i.e., global warming is a myth created by evil one-worlders and embraced by ninnies–has been wavering for a while.”

Makes me wonder… have any of these people ever bothered to read Michaels’ work? I doubt it. It’s a lot easier to dismiss him as a paid goon of the Fossil Fuel Industry than to grapple with his arguments.

As I recall from what I’ve read, Michaels does not deny that global warming is occurring, although he debates the extent to which it is taking place. He also places that warming in the context of the fact that temperatures now are about the same as they were in the Medieval Warm Period, some of the warmest centuries in the previous 8,000 years. That warm period, presumably not caused by industrial carbon dioxide emissions, was followed by what historians labeled the Little Ice Age, which led most notoriously to the extinction of the Norse settlements in Greenland. In turn, the Little Ice Age yielded to the current warming trend, which began around 1800.

Michaels also concedes that human activity contributes to global warming. What he disputes is the extent to which human activity is responsible, in particular the degree to which rising temperatures are directly related to the level of CO2 greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. He notes, for instance, that CO2 emissions were increasingly steadily between 1940 and 1970, when average temperatures were falling — prompting worries at the time of an impending ice age. (He also offers a lot of arguments too technical to go into here.)

Finally, as I recall, Michaels questions the usefulness of the Kyoto Treaty in addressing global warming. Fulfilling the objectives of that treaty, at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars to the United States economy, would impact global temperatures by a tiny fraction of one degree decades out. Would it not be more economically rational, he asks, to adapt to climate change rather than try to halt it?

I don’t know the answers. I don’t know if Michaels is right or wrong. But I do know one thing: When a consensus in the elite media, not necessary the scientific community, is driving climate research and policy, it’s a good thing to have skeptical voices challenging the received wisdom — regardless of where their funding comes from. Sometimes the received wisdom is right. Sometimes it’s not.

A fascinating debate over growth management is playing out in Albemarle County. The Board of Supervisors is considering two new ordinances — phasing and clustering — designed to protect 95 percent of the county acreage designated as rural. A number of farmers and small property owners vehemently criticized the proposals in a hearing yesterday, arguing that the restrictions would confiscate much of the value of their land. The Charlottesville Daily Progress describes the ordinances this way:

To slow such development, phasing would allow two subdivision rights on each parcel every 10 years. To reduce any impact on natural resources, clustering would entail grouping small parcels together and leaving a large preservation tract undeveloped. The Planning Commission has recommended that the two ideas be used together to achieve both of those goals.

Albemarle County is a beautiful place, and I am sympathetic to the desire to protect it from development. But I’m not convinced that these ordinances are the best way to do it. Phasing development over years and decades would slow growth, but in doing so, it would guarantee that growth took the form of small, piecemeal projects. Large, well-financed developers would steer clear, effectively precluding any comprehensive, well-planned development. Growth would be scattered, disconnected and low density — in a word, it would be sprawl.

The clustering idea can be charitably described only as “less bad.” Clustering development in compact areas makes sense on the micro scale. But in the larger, Albemarle-wide context, it won’t make much difference. Instead of 10-acre lots smeared across the countryside, we’ll see compact little subdivisions strewn across the countryside. Such a development pattern still will put stress on local road networks and the delivery of county infrastructure and services.

The only way to “save” the countryside without ruining it is to allow already-developed portions of Albemarle County, particularly along U.S. 29 north of Charlottesville, to evolve into a more urban settlement pattern, and thus accommodate a larger population. If the county also allowed for the expansion of urban enclaves (the pattern and density of small towns) in places like Crozet and Scottsville, there would be little demand to build scattered subdivisions in the countryside… and no need for landowners to feel like their property rights were being violated.

Here’s the opening paragraph of a WaPo editorial today:

THERE THEY don’t go again: Metro’s board of directors, kowtowing to the provincial politics of its members from Virginia, has voted to put the brakes on a swift and logical selection of a general manager, even though someone already is doing the job impressively. Dan Tangherlini, the system’s interim general manager since February, has won high praise in short order for weeding out bad middle managers, lifting morale and responding to rider complaints.

Usually the Post editorial writers single out those doctrinaire, anti-tax, downstate Republicans in the House of Delegates for blame. But they couldn’t this time — none of them sit on the Metro board of directors. Instead, it takes a shot at Gerald E. Connolly, chairman of the Fairfax County board chairman and the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission, which appoints the Virginia Metro board members (and, incidentally, a Democrat). The Virginians’ sin:

Last month the posturing worriers talked the board into a needless dawdle, launching a “national search” for a general manager, which could take up to three months.

The Washington Post might feel a tad differently if it were fronting the $4 billion in capital costs for the Rail-to-Dulles extension of the Metro as well as multi-millions of dollars yearly in operating subsidies.

Gregory Letiecq, the blogger behind the Northern Virginia blog “Black Velvet Bruce Lee,” has received a cease and desist letter from the Los Angeles law firm representing the estate of the late Bruce Lee. Letiecq, a 42-year-old computer programmer who comments on Prince William and Manassas politics, said he won’t fight it, according to the Manassas Journal-Messenger. He doesn’t need the trouble.

I have to say, though, I love Letiecq’s idea of his changing the name to “Not Black Velvet Bruce Lee.” How could the Bruce Lee estate complain with that? The blog would explicitly state that it’s NOT black velvet Bruce Lee. No room for trademark confusion there!

(By the way, for a great laugh, view “Something to Really Complain About.”)

As blogs gain readership and prominence, expect more legal actions against them for trademark/copyright infringement, libel, defamation, violations of political campaign laws, or God knows what else. Welcome to the real world, baby.

Attorney General Bob McDonnell has announced the formation of a Government and Regulatory Reform Task Force. The objective: to start a “serious, long-term effort” to reduce “unnecessary and obsolete regulations in Virginia, and to limit the regulatory burden on Virginia businesses and citizens.”

The Virginia Administrative Code may not be the Federal Register (thank you, lord) but it still runs 24,000 pages. But it’s big enough to undermine Virginia’s reputation as one of the most business-friendly states in the country. As a McDonnell press release stated:

Recent studies have indicated that Virginia’s regulatory ranking has slipped in recent years. Pacific Research Institute’s 2004 Economic Freedom Index report gave Virginia a regulatory ranking of 15th. Similarly, a 1999 study by Clemson University ranked Virginia 2nd in terms of economic freedom, but gave the Commonwealth a score of 18th on the regulatory component.

There will be three working groups: one for agriculture, one for small business and one for health care.

It sounds like a useful exercise. It’s entirely possible that nothing will come of it — another study collecting dust on the shelf. Remember the Wilder Commission report? On the other hand, I can’t see any harm coming from it.

Update: The task force invites the public to report egregious regulations or pass along other information/advice by e-mailing [email protected].